September 22

Better Than News

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  At the Mountains of Madness is a 1933 American pre-Code musical horror film directed by Lloyd Bacon, with musical numbers created and directed by Busby Berkeley.

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  The Baywatch Revolutions is an American dystopian drama television series about virtual lifeguards who patrol the simulated beaches of Los Angeles County, California, and Hawaii.

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  The Silence of the Lions is an animated musical coming-of-age psychological horror film directed by Jonathan Demme, Roger Allers, and Rob Minkoff, starring Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, and James Earl Jones.

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  Barefoot in Havana is an American romantic comedy thriller film about an uptight lawyer with a gambling problem (Robert Redford) who meet a free-spirited political activist (Jane Fonda) in Havana, Cuba on the eve of the Cuban Revolution.

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  Run Soylent, Run Green is an American science fiction war film starring Clark Gable, Burt Lancaster, and Charlton Heston.

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  Men Only Want Ten Things is a 1979 American romantic coming-of-age film starring Bo Derek and Sam J. Jones.

Beyond Plausible

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  Red Spot Travel Agency is an exoplanetary retailer that provides travel and tourism-related services between Earth and Jupiter.

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  The Last Man in the Matrix is a 1964 dystopian science fiction film about a man who wakes up to find that he is the only survivor from the Matrix Age.

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  Vitrified Man is a drawing by the Italian Renaissance artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci, dated to c. 1490, which is embedded in radioactive glass inside a protective metal case.

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  Ruin a first date in seven words or less.

In Other Words

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  First In, First Out is a classic treatise on queuing theory which emphasizes the effect of ethanol on gnomon algorithm theorists.

Are You Sure

A nomogram (from Greek νόμος nomos, "law" and γραμμή grammē, "line"), also called a nomograph, alignment chart or abaque, is a graphical calculating device, a two-dimensional diagram designed to allow the approximate graphical computation of a mathematical function.

• ... that engineer and mathematician Philbert Maurice d'Ocagne invented the nomograph, a chart for the computation of algebraic equations?

• ... that physician and researcher Alice Hamilton was a leading expert in the field of occupational health and a pioneer of industrial toxicology; and that Hamilton was also a social-welfare reformer, humanitarian, peace activist, and a resident-volunteer at Hull House in Chicago?

• ... that mathematician Shoshichi Kobayashi studied Riemannian and complex manifolds, transformation groups of geometric structures, and Lie algebras?

• ... that Dennis Paulson of Mars trained for his historic reality television show by reviewing data from the 2015 MAVEN probe concerning the deterioration of Mars’ atmosphere due to solar storms — a loss of atmosphere to space which likely played a key role in Mars' gradual shift from its carbon dioxide-dominated atmosphere to the cold, arid planet seen today?

Selected Anniversaries

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  1547: Philologist, mathematician, astronomer, and poet Philipp Nicodemus Frischlin born. His prolific and versatile genius will produce a great variety of works, but his reckless life and libelous letters will lead to imprisonment.

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  1624: Math photographer Cantor Parabola captures unprecedented images of Renaissance-era crimes against mathematical constants.

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  1703: Mathematician and scientist Vincenzo Viviani dies. In 1660, Viviani and Giovanni Alfonso Borelli conducted an experiment to determine the speed of sound. Timing the difference between the seeing the flash and hearing the sound of a cannon shot at a distance, they calculated a value of 350 meters per second (m/s), considerably better than the previous value of 478 m/s obtained by Pierre Gassendi.

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  1970: Physician, research scientist, and author Alice Hamilton dies. She was a leading expert in the field of occupational health and a pioneer in the field of industrial toxicology.

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  1974: Physicist Winfried Otto Schumann dies. He predicted the existence of Schumann resonances, a series of low-frequency resonances caused by lightning discharges in the atmosphere.

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  2012: Mathematician, author, activist, and academic Irving Adler dies. He was a plaintiff in the McCarthy-era case Adler vs. Board of Education.

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  2014: The MAVEN probe reaches Mars and is inserted into an areocentric elliptic orbit 6,200 km (3,900 mi) by 150 km (93 mi) above the planet's surface.

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  2017: Dennis Paulson celebrates third anniversary the MAVEN probe reaching Mars.

Topic of the Day

Food and Beverages

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  Cronenburger is a Canadian-American extreme body modification restaurant chain inspired by David Cronenberg's 1981 film Scanners.

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  The Tacoverse is a transdimensional corporation which functions as a pocket universe constructed entirely from tacos.

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  Not Milk? (stylized as not milk?) is an advertising campaign encouraging the non-consumption of milk by Bronze-age warriors.

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  Devil 2: Elevator Smells is a 2022 supernatural foodie horror film about five food critics (one of whom may be Chef Ramsay) trapped in an elevator.